Friday, February 1, 2013

The Death Road

I
went down to the hostel lobby this morning to check my email and found the night
clerks hard at work:

After
breakfast, Mike and I hit the road for Coroico and the famous Death Road, or
"Camino de la Muerte" as the locals call it. The Death Road was listed as the
most dangerous road in the world for quite some time. I can't remember the exact
numbers, but they used to have something like 20-30 fatalities a year on this
road. You can look up youtube videos of busses falling off of cliffs while
trying to negotiate the Death Road's treacherous corners. However, within the
last few years the government went through and built another, safer road across
the canyon so that Bolivianos can now drive between La Paz and Coroico without
having to roll the dice for their survival.

The Death Road is now
primarily a tourist attraction, though people sometimes still use it to transit
to and from La Paz. The majority of the traffic on the route now consists of
tourists on mountain bikes looking for some cheap thrills.

We left La Paz
around 10:00 AM and headed east. The road climbs high up into the Andes before
crossing a dizzying pass and descending down the other side.

As
you can see from the picture below, my GPS was showing over 15,000 feet of
elevation near the top. That's significantly higher than any point in the lower
48 states.

After
cresting out and beginning the decent, the weather turned cold and
cloudy.

After
asking a few locals for directions, we finally found the entrance to the Death
Road. There aren't any signs saying "Death Road Here!", but they do have this
nifty little sign explaining the rules of the road: drive on the left hand side
of the road, keep your lights on day and night, uphill traffic has the right of
way, and
honk your horn before going around a corner.

After
snapping our pictures, we set off into the fog on the beginning of the Death
Road.

Before
long we started coming across mountain bikers.

The
road is cut into the side of the mountain; the drop off is extremely severe and
is anywhere from a few hundred feet to thousands of feet of nearly straight
vertical plunge.

About
a quarter of the way down the road, we stopped so that Mike could air up his
tire and we were suddenly surrounded by mountain biking tourists! Eventually we
had to ask them to get out of the way so that we could leave.

Back
on the road, we had the joy of riding through a few small waterfalls.
Unfortunately, I had taken off my water proof shell and was soon
soaked.

It's
hard to get an idea of just how shear of a drop off it is on the side of this
road. The pictures don't really do it justice. When you are riding down this
thing, you are just inches away from a thousand foot plunge down the side of the
mountain. Hopefully this picture will help add a small amount of
perspective:

The
vegetation gets in the way a little bit, but you can see just how steep of a
drop off awaits the unwary traveler or the foolish rider....

Just after
the last picture was taken, I dropped my bike. It's a heavy son of a gun with
all of that luggage, and after laughing at me and snapping a few photos, Mike
came over and helped me out.

We
continued on down the road and eventually left the mountain bikers and steep
drop-off's behind. We were soon rewarded with a few fun water
crossings.

All
in all, the Death Road wasn't as epic as I thought it would be. Sure, if it were
still being used as the main route between Coroico and La Paz, it would probably
be insane. The Bolivians are pretty crazy drivers. Seeing a Bolivian trying to
take a bus down that road would have been an experience. However, since there
isn't any serious traffic on the road, it's really not that scary. There are
some beautiful views though, and it provides a good excuse to get off the
pavement.

We eventually made it into the town of Coroico where we stopped
for lunch in the main plaza.

After
eating, we jumped on the new road and rode back to La Paz for the night.
Tomorrow we are going to start heading south again, making our way towards
Potosi and the Salar de Unuyi.